


Friday’s Child (works hard for a living)

by tigriswolf



Series: comment_fic drabbles [258]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Non-Graphic Violence, Pre-Canon, Walkabout, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-01
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-04-02 08:45:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4053841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/pseuds/tigriswolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world is hard for children, and harder still for orphans -- but Tom is clever.  Tom has his talents, what he now knows is magic.  It’s like a storybook, only he’s not the long-lost and long-sought-for prince.  He’s in a storybook but he’s still a nobody.  </p><p>[Tom Riddle never goes to Hogwarts]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Friday’s Child (works hard for a living)  
> Disclaimer: most of them are my characters, actually, but the ones you recognize aren’t  
> Warnings: references to violence and WW2; AU way pre-canon  
> Pairings: none  
> Rating: PG  
> Wordcount: 1070  
> Point of view: third  
> Prompt: Harry Potter, Tom Riddle, He never went to Hogwarts, he trained himself in magic
> 
> Note: pretend Tom Riddle is two years younger or else ignore that The Blitz happens at the wrong time

After the _wizard_ leaves, Tom runs. He has no idea where he's going, but it's better than staying where he is, where he's hated and feared, where even his _own kind_ will look at him in apprehension and suspicion. 

The world is hard for children, and harder still for orphans -- but Tom is clever. Tom has his talents, what he now knows is magic. It’s like a storybook, only he’s not the long-lost and long-sought-for prince. He’s in a storybook but he’s still a nobody. 

He’s an eleven-year-old orphan living on the streets of London and he’ll make do whether the world wants him or not. 

.

There’s no point in keeping a name that means nothing, a name given to him by a woman who didn’t love him enough to stay alive, a name for the father who didn’t want either of them.

When the bombing starts, he still hasn’t chosen a name. He hasn’t even been practicing much with his talent, except when he sees if it’ll give him an edge in pickpocketing – which it doesn’t. It takes too long, and it’s too noticeable. Maybe it’s that he’s too hungry to feel much; he noticed, in the orphanage, that it always came easier when he was angry, the few times he was scared. 

He’s plenty scared when the bombing comes. Terrified out of his mind is more right, but he huddles up against a wall and pretends nothing can touch him, and for all the noise, nothing does. 

Nothing touches him until the bombs stop falling and he’s utterly exhausted the entire time, scrounging for scraps, looking far more pitiful than he ever has, and he survives and he survives, and he settles on the name _Arthur_ very early one morning, watching the sunlight spread through the fog and the smoke, because that is the destiny he will choose – 

Arthur, Once and Future King. Yes. Let the judgmental old man choke on that.

.

Arthur is twelve when he leaves London. He’s had enough of people and he can forage in the countryside better than in the city. If worst comes to worst, he can ask the serpents for help; they like him better than any human he’s ever known. He chooses his surname for them: Arthur Adder, a dark-haired, dark-eyed boy who tans with the sun and talks to serpents and summons things to him with a thought, transforms things into different shapes, leaps off walls and floats to the ground. 

He’s an odd boy, that Arthur Adder, but charming and polite. 

The world is hard for children, and harder still for orphans. But Arthur Adder is determined to survive. 

.

In the winter, Arthur holes up in different hamlets, making himself useful to people so they’ll offer him shelter and share their food. When he’s younger, it’s easier – he is a small boy, slight. He’s not sure if he’ll ever be big like some of the men he sees on his travels, but he tries to eat well in the spring and summer while he travels. 

He practices his talent constantly, and the older he gets, the easier it comes to him, the less he needs strong emotion. The more time he spends on his own, with the serpents, the less angry he feels about… so many things. 

.

The first time he transports himself from one side of a clearing to the other, he passes out and wakes to a frightened woman calling for help. He is seventeen and she’s a little older, and she’s panicking, and then there are more people, all wearing odd clothing – 

He’s still so tired, so he slips back under. 

.

The young woman is named Elizabeth but she goes by Lizzie. She’s also a witch. She’s engaged to a soldier she hasn’t seen in nearly a year and her father is a tired farmer, but her mother is a witch, too. The village is a fair mix of magical folk and non-magical ( _muggle_ , the old man had called them, but Lizzie says they don’t like that, some of the time, so she just calls them non-magical). 

Lizzie’s father Fred doesn’t want to take him in but Lizzie and her mother Sally convince him without much hassle. Arthur spends the better part of a year with them, learning actual spells. Lizzie explains that she and her mother before her didn’t go to Hogwarts, either; there’s a small school for the local communities that all the magical children get sent to, and they let him have their old schoolbooks, so long as he leaves them when he goes, for the children Lizzie and her soldier (Ned, apparently, who is non-magical) will have once he comes home and they get married. 

Arthur kisses Lizzie but once. She loves Ned fiercely, so she pulls away and tells him to not do that again if he wants to stay. 

The village grows boring eventually, and Arthur memorizes all the books, so he thanks Lizzie and her parents, and he moves on. 

.

Transporting himself through space is called _apparition_. He practices with it because it is highly useful, and like all the rest of his various talents, it gets easier. By the time Arthur is twenty, everything is so very easy. 

He likes solitude, but he has no idea what’s going on in the rest of the world. According to the various villages he passes through (still avoiding large cities), the war is over. England and her allies won. Beyond that, though, he knows almost nothing.

.

When Arthur Adder is twenty years and six months old, he returns to London. It is time to explore the magical world. He is a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark hair and dark eyes, and he does not need a wand. He buys one for appearance’s sake from a hag selling them out of a basket. 

In Ollivander’s shop, a yew wand with a phoenix feather core goes unsold. 

In Hogwarts, the Transfiguration professor has forgotten that odd boy who never arrived for his Sorting. 

In Flourish and Blotts, Arthur Adder purchases a dozen history texts with galleons pickpocketed from wizards too foolish to place protection charms on their money. 

In the centaur colony within the Forbidden Forest, in the bounds of Hogwarts’ wards, the centaurs murmur to each other that the future has shifted – and no seer across the land can yet see what might come to pass instead.


	2. unfinished part2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: Friday’s Child (works hard for a living)  
> Disclaimer: most of them are my characters, actually, but the ones you recognize aren’t  
> Warnings: references to violence and WW2; AU way pre-canon  
> Pairings: none  
> Rating: PG  
> Wordcount:   
> Point of view: third  
> Prompt: Harry Potter, Voldemort, Ain't No Rest for the Wicked
> 
>  
> 
> I don't remember where exactly this was going, but Gringotts and Arthur's inheritance were going to work together to help him change the magical society from the inside out.

After taking a year to study the recent history (such as the Dark Lord Grindlewald and his defeat at the hands of Albus Dumbledore, the man who had judged Tom Riddle and found him wanting) and the society of magical England, Arthur Adder decides to apply for a teaching position at Hogwarts, the school he chose not to attend. The Muggle Studies curriculum, going by the text required for it (for the past century), has fallen behind the reality and Arthur feels that he is suited for the position. 

He applies to the Department of Magical Education in order to take his NEWTs, and since there was so much chaos as a result of the war, he is accepted with a dozen others, all scheduled to test on Wednesday, May 28, 1954. Arthur only tests for the core subjects and Muggle Studies, and he receives his results a few weeks later, halfway through June: for Transfiguration, Charms, History, and Astronomy, he earned Exceeds Expectations; for Defense Against the Dark Arts, Herbology, and Potions, he earned Acceptable; and for Muggle Studies, he earned Outstanding. 

He writes a very detailed letter to Deputy Headmaster Dumbledore, explaining his passion for accurate facts and how non-magical technology has advanced in ways that the magical community must be kept aware of; he encloses his NEWT results and contact information, and sends it all off with Merlin, his eagle owl (purchased with pickpocketed galleons on his second visit to Diagon Alley) on June 16. 

Arthur Adder’s birthday is June 19, 1929, two years younger than Tom Riddle. There is no record of him, but he knows that can be blamed on the war, if he makes it so that his family fled the earliest signs of the horrors to come. While he waits for the acceptance or rejection, he decides to finally satisfy his boyish curiosity for his heritage and visits Gringotts, where he requests a Heritage Test. 

“Interesting,” the goblin administering the test says as the parchment fills in. “You are the sole beneficiary of five ancient vaults.” Of the five, the only name Arthur recognizes is _Slytherin_. 

“May I have a full accounting of everything held in the vaults?” he asks and the goblin nods. 

.

All told, Arthur Adder is one of the richest wizards in England. He chooses not to disclose that. He also now has several different libraries and dozens of artifacts of priceless value. He spends a week combing through each vault – as far as he can determine, he is a descendant only of Slytherin, due to the tapestry that has listed each direct blood relative, _Tom Riddle Jr._ being the last. But because of the notoriety of the name, he chooses not to disclose that, either. 

Instead, he chooses the _Drayke_ family to claim as his own, just as old but long since extinct. He finds very old records in the Drayke vault which explain that the Head of the family owed Salazar Slytherin I for an act of great kindness (but not what that act was), and so when the last blood descendant died, all of the Drayke assets were magically willed to Slytherin’s line. 

While Arthur will not reveal any sensitive information, being able to add _Lord Drake_ after his name will lend him an air of credibility. Wearing the Drake ring will show he is worth listening to, though he’ll need to prove it, of course. 

But for now, he is just glad to have knowledge of his family. His mother was Merope Gaunt, a witch; his father was Tom Riddle, a non-magical. He came from somewhere and perhaps he is a long lost prince after all.

He decides to see how far he can get as simply Arthur Adder and continues to research the history of each ancient bloodline while waiting for Dumbledore’s reply. 

.

On July 2, Arthur receives Dumbledore’s acceptance, pending an interview.


End file.
